Der Tannhäuser

Tannhäuser, Der (c.1200-c.1270), was a Middle High German lyric poet whose rank is obscure. He is referred to in MSS. as ‘der Tannhûser’, which suggests a commoner, but some have held him to be of petty nobility from Tannhausen near Neumarkt in Franconia. He took part in a crusade, probably in 1228-9 and was later court poet with Friedrich der Streitbare of Austria, who rewarded him with land. He appears to have squandered his assets and after Friedrich's death led an unsettled life.

Tannhäuser's poetry marks historically a distinct phase in the decline of the concept of minne, but his work has a freshness and vigour which suggest rather an emancipation. His poetry reveals humour and irony, together with an alert sense of parody, which were necessarily absent from Minnesang proper. His surviving poems probably represent only a small proportion of his output. His love-songs are Arcadian in tone, with a direct sensuality remote from obscenity. He is one of the principal practitioners of the leich in the form of dance songs, and he wrote a crusade song which dwells with ironical humour on the hardships of a sea crossing.

Tannhäuser, perhaps because of his years in the Near East and the frankness of his love poetry, became a legendary figure, as the knight who visited Venus's grotto (see Venusberg), repented, and sought absolution from the Pope. In this form he is commemorated in the Tannhäuserlied (recorded in 1515), which reappears as ‘Der Tannhäuser’ in Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1805-8) and later, in combination with the Wartburgkrieg, in Wagner's Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg.

Tannhäuser's poems were edited by J. Siebert (1934).